This invention relates to a new device and a new method for collecting earthworms, with due attention to safety for the person collecting the earthworms as well as to safety and freedom from harm or injury to the earthworms being collected.
Collecting earthworms for use as bait in fishing, and particularly the collection of earthworms of night crawler size for that purpose, has been an activity not always accomplished under agreeable conditions. For example, nighttime collection after a rain is commonly recognized as one of the best times to collect earthworms, but the darkness and wetness are not conditions of choice for human comfort. Another problem with nighttime collection is that it is conducted under conditions that seem to be highly favorable to the earthworms, particularly the night crawlers. During nighttime hours they seem to have a sharpened sense for detecting an approaching collector (whether from sound or vibration caused by a collector's movement or from the light of a collector's flashlight, etc.). In any event, night crawlers generally are well on their way striving to get back into the earth by the time a collector reaches out to grab them during nighttime collection efforts.
Digging and turnover of earth has been another way to collect the earthworms needed for fishing, but this approach requires physical effort not always giving commensurate results.
Still further, an electrical device to assist collection has been used, but according to the following newspaper article from the "Saint Paul Pioneer Press" of Saint Paul, Minn. (Jun. 2, 1993 at page 4A), much danger is associated with its use:
"Worm Getter," an electrical probe that is suppose [sic] to shock earthworms into crawling to the surface of the ground where they can be collected for fish bait, is being recalled by retailers because such devices have been putting fishermen underground instead. The Consumer Product Safety Commission said the 83,000 owners of the devices should return them for refunds, following reports that 30 worm hunters have been electrocuted.
Other techniques for collecting earthworms have involved the use of chemicals, but this can be harmful to the earthworms as pointed out in U.S. Pat. No. 1,446,914 as well as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,239,413, both of which teach chemical solutions designed to drive earthworms out of the earth.
Thus, to the extent known, the art has not heretofore had a completely safe and harmless and almost effortless technique for stimulating earthworms to migrate to the earth's surface for easy collection at any time that the person collecting the worms elects to engage in collection. This invention constitutes a breakthrough solution to that problem.